So what does, or rather will, make The Last Airbender so special? Tara Bennet of SCI FI Wire enlightens us after a visit to the set.
Over the course of a century, the world is nearly shattered by relentless battles until the only hope for peace appears in the form of Aang (Noah Ringer), a bald little boy with some serious kung-fu skills. An Airbender from the Air Nation, Aang discovers that he is the legendary Avatar, the lone human who can harness the powers of each element to restore balance to the ravaged world. Together with Katara (Nicola Peltz), his Waterbender best friend, and her headstrong brother, Sokka (Jackson Rathbone), Aang reluctantly goes on the journey to fulfill his destiny of restoring the world through his remarkable gift of “bending” the elements to his will.
Then a visit to a few locations.
We walk a few yards away from the mouth of a white “ice” cave, carved from foam and plastic and covered in a blanket of faux snow. Its steps lead into the mouth of a darkened bluish-gray cave that twists along for 40 feet before the path opens up into a glorious chamber that looks as if it was plucked from the canvas of a beautiful Asian landscape painting. High walls rise to create a cocooned oasis of (now dry) koi ponds, with green moss banks that lead to the stunning focal point: a towering, twisted-limbed, resplendently blooming cherry tree filled with blossoms. Even with the set not fully dressed for filming, the tree is a breathtaking vision, with 3,500 hand-placed tiny pink blossoms. It’s called the Spiritual Place, where Aang will meet the Moon Spirit, and it elicits authentic goosebumps for what this place will look like once captured on film.
Shyamalan then shared how he’s evolving as a filmmaker.
“It’s been such a great growing experience for me as a director and a human being, because I am a complete control freak,” Shyamalan says with a grin. “You know, I feel like a little bit of pain when I look at a frame and it’s not right and I have to correct it. This has taught me there are just so many factors going on; it’s doing two and a half times a [normal] movie of mine, so it made me go back a little bit and become a student. Any time you can become a student again, that’s the way to do it. You learn again, and you are open about everything. I felt like I’ve become a much better filmmaker, because I have had to go through this process where it’s just not possible for me to do that for 400 extras with the action going on. It’s overwhelming. I am scared to death.”
Finally, Shyamalan shared how he hopes The Last Airbender will set itself apart from other epic Hollywood franchises.
“It’s so original, which has always been my hope: that it’s not like anything else,” Shyamalan explains about his vision for Airbender. “It’s not really Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter or The Matrix or Pirates of the Caribbean. But there is a little bit of this and that, with me smothered all over it. There is pathos in it, yet it’s really fun. You pray that it will find its own personality and will be its own self and the world will appreciate it for that.”
The full article can be read at SCI FI Wire.
Tags: Avatar: The Last Airbender, Dev Patel, Frank Marshall, Jackson Rathbone, m. night, Nicola Peltz, Noah Ringer, Philadelphia, Shooting Locations, shyamalan
June 24, 2009 at 3:05 am |
seeing stuff like this makes me more excited.
June 24, 2009 at 3:07 am |
i want to see the sets so bad @_@
July 1, 2009 at 2:28 am |
omg I KNOW! They sound so beautiful. With modern cg and advanced set designers, this movie should be incredible!
June 24, 2009 at 4:40 am |
Pretty nice post. I just came across your blog and wanted to say
that I have really enjoyed reading your blog posts. Any way
I’ll be subscribing to your feed and I hope you write again soon!
June 24, 2009 at 6:25 am |
AVATAR: THE LAST AIRBENDER is better than STAR WARS.
There… I said it!
June 24, 2009 at 12:43 pm |
I’m letting this one fly because you’re entitled to your opinion….
Star Wars is still better.
June 28, 2009 at 3:31 am |
Um…NO! Unless you’re talking about eps 1, 2 and 3, which sucked, then I’ll agree with you. Anything is better than Attack of the Clones.
June 24, 2009 at 7:26 am |
“An Airbender from the Air Nation, Aang discovers that he is the legendary Avatar, the lone human who can harness the powers of each element to restore balance to the ravaged world.”
Phew, this seems more right than the facts from an earlier article.
Now I’m looking more and more forward to it, july 2010, why are you so far away…
June 24, 2009 at 11:04 pm |
star wars is not better than AVATAR , avatar is so much better all this bending stuff. No animator has ever thought about all this so there u have it.
June 25, 2009 at 12:31 am |
@katara
You can’t say one is better than the other because both are very good franchises with different plots. No need to compare… Both are great, and the fact that you don’t like one doesn’t mean its bad….
Ppl try to see things from an objective point of view…
June 25, 2009 at 8:56 pm |
So? I was making a joke. But my own personal opinion is that Star Wars is better.
June 26, 2009 at 6:51 am |
I’m a fan of both Star Wars and Avatar so it’s really insulting that you say Star Wars isn’t good.
In my opinion, BOTH are good in their own ways. The two can’t be compared because they are totally different.
I admit I’ve been a fan of Star Wars longer ofcourse but then that doesn’t mean I’m not a fan of Avatar.
June 25, 2009 at 3:59 am |
Can’t Wait for 2010…. I’m an Avid fan of the series…. Nuff said..
June 25, 2009 at 7:06 am |
I used to be a huge fan of Avatar however i am not sure this movie will be that good if it is indeed part of a three part adaption as i have heard. The teaser trailer looks good but at the start of the Avatar series Aang had only just mastered basic Air moves and it was later when he met up with Katara that he started to learn more Air and Water bending moves.
Out of all the fight sequences they could put in this film i am mainly excited about the Earth fight when Aang learns his Earth moves.
June 25, 2009 at 6:42 pm |
Aang’s arrow tatoo is a sign that he has already mastered airbending, in general. He has had that tatoo for the duration of the entire show, including the beginning. Also, I read in an article that the teaser trailer was conceived and shot by M. Night himself, so it won’t be part of the movie. It’s just made to tease us as the name suggests.
June 27, 2009 at 12:37 am
The air tatoo is just a custom among airbender monks … it isn’t at all related to your bending skills … >_>
Aang was already good before being caught in the ice among the airbenders of his generation, but anyways he sure got a lot of training during his journey.
June 27, 2009 at 12:53 pm
Bryan Konietzko and Michael DiMartino say in a special feature on the first season dvd set, that Aang’s tattoos represent that he is a Master Airbender.
Interesting fact: Unlike the other nations the air nomads all could use their nation’s bending element. But for the other nations, who becomes a bender is dependent upon what season you are born into. (I read that in an official book somewhere)
July 1, 2009 at 2:32 am
Yeah, the arrows are actually a symbol that he’s passed the thirty-somethin levels (34?) of airbending, with the invention of a new technique being the final test. His invention of the air scooter gained him his arrows prematurely, making him the youngest airbender ever to receive his arrows.
July 2, 2009 at 1:02 am |
@whyMshyamawow- It is not just customary- as others have said. it is when you have essentially mastered airbending. have you ever seen the “Storm” episode where aang relives his past? You’d have noticed that all of his friends (all his age) Had NO tattoo. Not one of them had it- just aang
June 25, 2009 at 10:19 pm |
I went to Sci Fi wire and because of the stupid comments I was reading I post this.
(I read these comments, because I am was just interested in what people were thinking about the article. Then I find this trash talk, both sides screaming at each other over the issue of skin.
I live in a multi race society, and every time I go into town I see people of different races, if not cultures. I don’t need movies to tell me what to think about people, I learnt from from my culture and society, that we are all just people.
Some of the best actors have played roles where they are acting as a member of another race. And in this film Aang isn’t an asian. So what? In the cartoon series he wasn’t from Japan or China, he was an air nomand, fom the Southern Air Temple. It was a cartoon, it was not clear what racial features he has that might compare to features of our world. He was wearing asian styled clothes, but so do the characters in Firefly, and you didn’t see Joss Whendon fans tearing their hair out, demanding that Inara and Kaylee were recast for the movie.
The filming is almost over, things can’t be changed now. Move on, live with it and before you decide it is going to be a flop or not, I dare you to watch that teaser trailer and go to the cinema July 2010 and see the movie. If you decide to hate a film you haven’t even seen a trailer of because it had white actors, then I think that you are the people who are racist. That you are the stupid bigots.)
I had a bit of a rant, but they needed it. I just hope they take me up on my dare. What do you think, was I too hash on the poor delicate dears? (We wouldn’t want them to end up like Foamy!)
June 26, 2009 at 4:33 am |
Good for you! I’ve also seen tons of explosive arguments about skin color that really spiral out of control. Hopefully they’ll listen to some common sense…
Wanting more multiculturalism in movies is fine, but screaming and trash-talking won’t accomplish anything. Except lead to more screaming and trash-talking.
June 26, 2009 at 11:21 am
Thank you. I really feel better for the rant now, though reading through it, I keep noticing spelling and grammer mistakes. I hope it is still understandable.
June 26, 2009 at 12:06 pm |
i agree with you, cause yes they based it on the Asian culture but they didn’t specifically said that they WERE Asian, right? and of all the Asian based movies that were made by Americans, they started ‘complaining’ on TLA.
June 26, 2009 at 11:30 am |
What??!!!! No way! starwars is WAYYYY better than the Avatar! But the Avatar is still VERY cool
June 27, 2009 at 3:23 pm |
You’re cool.
June 28, 2009 at 12:19 pm |
Well, maybe not cooler, we have only seen a teaser trailer, but at the moment, the trailer seems to hint at equal coolness!
June 28, 2009 at 8:55 pm |
I’m really hoping Night is doing the same thing with the last airbender trilogy as they have done with the harry potter series : in the beginning the films were for all ages, but as the actors became older and the ‘war’rages on, the films became more serious. This suits last airbender well, so that’s why I’m hoping Night will do the same.
July 11, 2009 at 2:48 pm |
Yes, I do think that would be rather appropriate for The Last Airbender(gah, can’t adjust to it!). It could be kind of fun and goofy in the beginning, like it is in the show, but then it progressively gets more serious.
August 3, 2009 at 3:02 am |
Spiritual Place? Last I checked it was called “the SPIRIT OASIS”